Illusion Of L’Phalcia Review (Nintendo Switch)

Welcome to our Illusion Of L’Phalcia review. Originally released back in 2014 for mobile devices, the developers EXE-CREATE and publisher KEMCO have finally brought the game to Nintendo’s marvelous little console.

Illusion Of L’Phalcia

Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, Xbox One, PS4, PS Vita, Android, iOS

Reviewed On: Nintendo Switch

Developer: EXE-CREATE

Publisher: KEMCO

Multiplayer: None

Available: 1st August 2019 (Nintendo Switch)

Price: £11.69 (U.K), $12.99 (U.S)

Age Rating: PEGI 16 (UK/EU), E 10+ (U.S)

Review Code Provided

Storywise, Illusion Of L’Phalcia takes on the common theme of bringing characters together through some sort of fate to travel around collecting things. It does differ slightly from a lot of other 2D RPG’s in that the story doesn’t have you going after crystals, but instead map pieces, to lead you to a special sword. While the typical bringing characters together element is still here, it’s nice to see that the developers have gone with something other than crystals.

When it comes to keeping up, I have actually found this game’s story to be interesting and very easy to keep track of. Something I really love is that this game actually has a story section in the in-game menu where you can go and look in case you’ve forgotten where you’re heading next and this is something I very rarely see in 2D RPG’s.

In-game menu showing the story option as well as all other options.

Illusion Of L’Phalcia certainly features a unique bunch of characters all bought together by fate. Without saying too much, the main characters, Ryser and Cougar are like brothers to one another even though one is a human and one is a feline. As you play through the story you’ll encounter more foes who will ultimately join you on your journey, one of which is Tiana, a girl with whom Ryser is always bickering at the beginning of the game. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I will leave it for you to find out the rest.

Gameplay in Illusion Of L’Phalcia is pretty straight forward and very much similar to most other 2D RPGs. You spend your time between different towns, dungeons and a world map. The main story missions will have you typically heading to a dungeon to collect a bit of map. Within these dungeons, you’ll find various small enemies and a main boss fight as well as a lot of treasure chests.

As well as the basic story missions, there are also side quests available from different people in different towns, which have you doing a variety of different things such as killing a certain monster or collecting battle data on a certain amount of a particular enemy.

Completed a sidequest for a citizen.

Character development follows the typical RPG style, in that your characters earn experience for every successful battle they finish alive and when a certain amount of experience points have been earned they will level up, which in turn improves their key stats permanently. Something I really like about the development system in this game is the way magic is handled, instead of different characters having certain abilities, each one has the chance to use black magic, white magic and mixed magic thanks to the use of a rune based system. With this system, each character has a grid of different size and shape and on this grid, you can place different shaped runes to enable as much magic and passive abilities as you’d like. The runes can be rotated to make them fit if there is room. At first, each character’s grid has some crossed out squares, but as you level up, these will become usable allowing you to create some pretty decent setups. As your characters level up, they will learn different magic for each of their runes.

The Rune Gem system.

The battle system is a basic turn-based affair complete with regular attacks and magic attacks at the cost of MP. Items are also usable in battles, just as you’d expect. When you get further into the game you will unlock a special meter, which once filled will allow you to perform a full team attack in one go. Each character also has his or her own set of special abilities, known as Phantom Skills, which can be utilized throughout battles to either inflict damage or cause status effects.

The game’s battle screen.

As well as leveling up to improve base stats, characters can also equip different weapons, armor and accessories of which all will have an effect on their base stats, for example, weapons mainly affect a character’s attack stat while armor affects their defense stat. Weapons, armor and accessories can be bought from town shops or found within treasure chests.

In conclusion, I have to say I have enjoyed Illusion Of L’Phalcia quite a lot and while I do find the typical story of characters being joined together by some sort of fate to be cliche and very dry by now, the game has hooked me in quite nicely and provided me with many hours of RPG entertainment. It might not be anything different and is pretty much like any other 2D RPG out there, but it seems really well done and seems to fit nicely on the Switch. Something I haven’t mentioned but am impressed by is just how smooth it looks on my T.V in 1080p and of course, it also looks pretty good on the Switch’s 720p display.

That concludes out Illusion Of L’Phalcia review. The game is available to buy now on Nintendo Switch here.

I am a reviewer based in the North of England, I have been writing reviews since 2015. I have recently written reviews on another site that I had co-founded. I started Northern Reviewer as a solo experience based on my previous website experience, which was literally none other than writing reviews and doing a few changes here and there behind the scenes.
In May 2019, I co-founded the sister site to Northern Reviewer, Northern Gamer, along with Chris Bracewell.

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